I was looking forward to wandering round the International Book Festival, but as Sita and I approached the entrance I was turned away because I didn’t have a press pass. So the only photos i have are from hanging around outside. Sita picked up some bargain books on Tequila and we’ll go back tomorrow when they allow gente de la calle like me in. I also had a bit of a wander around the barrio while Sita shmoozed.
Anyroad, from FIL through traffic chaos to Starbucks (their coffee’s good, what can I say?) and onto Santa Teresita to try and find more gaudy paint than Walmart were prepared to sell us. The sun was setting and the xmas decoration stands were out, have a butcher’s here. We didn’t find any paint shops but it was a nice little stroll. Sita’s cooking now, chicken and ginger I believe, and I think later on a quiet night in watching Jonathon Ross interview Gorillaz.
I’ve got an meeting with the Guad. parks authority on Friday. Which sounds promising, voluntary, but promising. May the floodgates be flung open. And thanks Arturo for long distance proof reading and thoughtful and entertaining emails.
I keep making highly selective posts, first no vegetarians, and now one for Spanish speakers who’ve been to Guadalajara. Apologies… Click on the “Comments” link below for 55 “You know you’re a Guadalajaran (Tapatio) if…”. Highlights include: You put lime on your tacos al pastor, you know where at least one narcotraficante lives, you went to or plan to go to the University of Guadalajara…
I joined Technorati today and appear to be getting a bit of traffic from it. Thanks for stopping by and if you fancy the full-on stalking experience check out the rest of the site that starts here at www.gwynunlimited.com.
And in other news, our water’s on the blink again.
>>Se sabe que alguien es tapatio cuando: >>1. Le pone limon a sus tacos al pastor >>2. Toma chesco en vez de refresco >>3. Le dice mijo o mija a cualquier wey que nunca a visto >>4. Dice EY o SIMON en vez de SI >>5. Dice “me volaron” en vez de “me robaron” >>6. Nunca visita el centro mas que pa’ comprar en una merceria, uniformes, tela, o algo pa un trabajo de la escuela. >>7. Se estaciona en el camellon >>8. Compra sus chelas en en oxxo >>9. Conoce por lo menos dos sucursales de TELAS PARISINA >>10. Conoce los tacos del Venado o los tacos Fonseca >>11. Va al cine los miercoles >>12. Dice la palabra FRESA o la palabra NACO por lo menos 10 veces al dia >>13. Tiene algun conocido que conoce a alguna de las esposas/amantes/novias de Alejandro Fernandez >>14. Ha estado por lo menos una vez en las fiestas de Octubre >>15. Ha escuchado la cancion “porque te tatuatis” >>16. Va a comprar tortillas con un trapo en la mano >>17. Va a la tiendita de la esquina a comprarse pecositas, tix tix, o rockaletas! >>18. Ha comido jericallas >>19. Va a por lo menos dos posadas al año >>20. Come buñuelos >>21. Le gusta bailar Banda y punchis punchis >>22. Sale a jugar “fucho” con sus amigos aunque no sepa >>23. Ha estado en el estadio jalisco por lo menos una vez y piensa que esta PADRISIMO! >>24. Dice “eda” en vez de “verdad” >>25. Dice “ira” en vez de “mira” >>26. Dice NEL en vez de no >>27. Le encantan los Simpson >>28. Su idolo es Beto Cardenas >>29. Le agrega “S” a los verbos…. comistes, tirastes, jugastes >>30. Lo llevaron como 50 veces al zoologico de chiquito >>31. Se ha trepado a todos los juegos en Selva Magica >>32. Piensa que Divertido Guadalajara es un fiasco! >>33. Ha tomado o vende Omilife >>34. Ha ido al tianguis del sol, al de zapopan, o a cualquier otro!!! >>35. Sabe la direccion de Oswaldo Sanchez >>36. Sabe que el cerro del cuatro se llama asi por el canal jajajajaja >>37. Le encanta ver MTV y canta canciones en ingles aunque no sabe lo que significan >>40. Lo han asaltado >>41. Sabe donde vive por lo menos un narco >>42. Esta molesto que ahora en vez de decir Chedrauoiuuouiuouoyi o lo que sea! >>43. Piensa que Plaza Galerias esta perrona! >>44. Ha ido a pasearse en carritos electricos en la plaza >>45. Ha ido por lo menos una vez al grito el 15 de Septiembre >>46. Ha visto un castillo de fuegos artificiales en el templo >>47. Ha jugado futbolito en la feria de las fiestas patronales del templo!!!!! >>48. Dice cosas como “chin!”, “ay wey”, “chido”, o “casi casi” >>49. Sabe que Guanatos significa Guadalajara y no Guanajuato!!!! >>50. Ha bailado el Son de la Negra, el jarabe tapatio, o Guadalajara, Guadalajaaaaaaa >>51. Le cae gordo Jorge Arana >>52. Sabe que Galilea Montijo trabajo en el Cucurrucucu, y que este lugar es un Teibol! >>53. Fue o planea ir a la Universidad de Guadalajara >>54. Veia Sixto o Lalo y Lagrimita!!! >>55. Sabe que Guadalajara es la ciudad mas bella de Mexico aunque no haya ido a ningun otro lugar del pais!!!!! >>Si te identificaste con un buen de estas cosas que me avente…enorgullesete, eres un buen tapatio!!!!
You turn your back for 10 minutes, then the next thing you know your kitchen and other parts of the house change colour. We’re in two minds about whether to leave it white or paint the same colour on the door area. Comment if you’ve really nothing better to do…
We went to the opening ceremony of the festival in Tequila yesterday. Click on the picture of Sita and Jayna (sp?) for a slideshow of the highlights. We took the toll road for 89 pesos (9 bucks, 5 quid). The journey there was easy enough- through foothills and fields of agave as the sun was setting. But it’s a steep price for 25 miles of dual carriageway. It’s not like we were going to Wales (How much is the Severn Bridge these days?). Anyroad, we got there and made our way along the route of the procession and found a bar to settle in (El Mesón del Mezcal). Before we knew it we were freebied up with margaritas and chips and salsa while two blokes trundled along the road pausing only to fill their minicanon with gun powder, tamp it down, light the fuse and fire it into the air. An indio beer and a torta ahogada later and the procession arrived, just like Taunton’s carnival, but without a float playing Wurzels hits.
We wandered into the town centre after all the desfile had passed by and drank in the sights. They cut the ribbon on the festival and the P.A. system launched into Tequila. Anyroad, a nice little evening. I missed the turn off for the toll road on the way back so it took an hour or so as I wasn’t up to overtaking the lorry we were stuck behind. Got back to Guad, dropped off Victor & Jayna and went to Rene’s house for beverages, tales of surgical disasters, and light snacks. Got home quite late. But all in all a grand day.
It’ll have some rollover nonsense added at some stage. Like hover over the “contact” sign and a Mexican police car will appear and an alert box will take you to PayPal for 400 pesos… Me Mum wants to see worms and tequila for some reason…
…in Kingston St. Mary, south west England. Meanwhile in Mexico sunshine as usual… Here’s some photos me dad took. I’m actually a bit jealous, but I’ll get over it. Belated giving of thanks this evening and tequila festival tomorrow in Tequila. I’m driving. Arse.
The latest bell/whistle I’ve added to the blog, just to make it load slower for dial-up users, is a blog map, bottom right. I’m not convinced it’s a useful addition but it can stay there for a week or two to see if there’s a burgeoning blogging scene in Gwod. So far, it’s not looking good. There’s an 18 year old student- Mexico is my body, Chivas (the local football team, not the whisky) is my blood, He tells us. And there’s La Perla’ who’s a graphic designer who likes to go out drinking. And fair play to her.
I had to pinpoint where i lived on a huge scale map so it’s got me living East of Tlaquepaque, which isn’t strictly true. That’ll foil the burglars for a day or two…
Last night Sita, Jose and I went to an Argentinean restaurant, La Matera I think it’s called named after the gourd thing you drink mate out of. Mate wasn’t on the menu however, probably because it’s illegal in most countries. Jose chose the place after a recommendation from his sister about the food there and a colleague at work who recommended the meseras. Anyroad after 30 minutes wait or so, we ordered lomo, medium rare and bugger me if it wasn’t the most delicious piece of meat I’ve ever sunk my teeth into. Melts-in-your-mouth good, on a par with the filet mignon we had in Buenos Aires, and the filete in ‘La I Latina’, Guadalajara. Not only was it delicious, but plentiful too and there’s still some left in the doggy bag in the fridge. This place is only 5 or 6 blocks from the house, whenever I land another job I know where we’re going to celebrate.
Their chips weren’t bad neither…
So plans for day… AgaveWeb, possibly Tonala/Tlaquepaque (It’s market day), and a quiet evening, for tomorrow it’s round some mates’ house for Thanksgiving. Talking of which, happy TG to my american readers. William Burroughs wasn’t a fan, mind. Never was the cheeriest of folks though…
Eureka! As in I’ve done it, not found it… Gwyn’s Blog- Self-absorption Central now has an RSS feed so I won’t have to change to a more modern blog engine after all. Thank you to Mensink.nl and hostsave.com for your help along the way.
What’s an RSS feed? Well, click here for a detailed explanation from WiseGeek.com. It’s something Flash asked me about a few posts ago and I said I’d look into it… so if you’re using firefox (and if not, why not?) you can add a “live bookmark” by clicking the orange icon on the bottom right of the window. That’ll add an entry in your bookmarks folder called ‘Gwyn’s Blog- Self-absorption Central’ and have the last 10 posts always listed.
There’s probably more to it than that, but I’m just starting up with this new fangled technology. I’ll try not to post too often about it. Business as usual will resume tomorrow…
Well while Sita tried to meet up with Dr. Muria (famous tequila historian) I gave my CV to the Museo de Arte de Zapopan to see if they needed anyone with my particular skill set. I won’t hear from them for 2 weeks apparently. Anyroad, spent a nice afternoon in Zapopan and went on to Zapopum, the expo/art showcase thing down the road from there. The highlight was the trained dog show- it was being televised for a local TV station and we were encouraged to look as enthusiastic as possible for the cameras. I wasn’t really getting into it until it all started going wrong as the dogs got collective stage fright. “They were all fine this morning” we were assured. Still we saw a corgi jumping through flaming hoops and I’m full of ideas to try out on Atticus when we get back to the US in the Spring for a few days.
Don’t know why I didn’t try this earlier… actually it’s cos I didn’t know you could put percentages in IMG tags, anyroad, not much news today. Saw Harry Potter last night, the cinema was full, not bad for a monday night 8:45 showing. At 2 and half hours it was pretty good value for money; I’m always happy to see what the state of the art in CGI is and anything else (acting, plot, etc) is a bonus.
We went to wander round a part of Guad called Seattle yesterday, gorgeous area. It’s a prosperous village that got swallowed up by the ever-expanding metropolis. They never got round to naming the streets though, so vertical ones are alphabetic and horizontal numeric. The blocks are about 3 times the size of your normal ones. Every house has a garden and the streets are cobbled with local volcanic stones. Really tranquill too, tree-lined avenues, little neighbourhood shops, bikes, dogs, birds swooping around and handy for Super WalMart. The latest Flickr photos tagged “seattle” are from there. Today we venture to Zapopan to check in on the Colegio de Jalisco and suchlike.
So I phoned last week offering my services as a volunteer translator and they called back saying they might have work. I called today and they told me they’re looking for an English teacher to teach small classes of their employees. For free. And that they didn’t have any courses or materials yet. I’d be designing them… anyroad, to cut a long story short, I politely declined citing my web design work. To which they said they actually needed someone to do web stuff and they’ll call back. I’m quite chuffed at that, this would be the perfect inroad to getting some projects to come my way. I might know by tomorrow…
Sita did her stint playing Snakes (Chutes in US speak) and Ladders with kiddies in the town centre yesterday while I wandered off and took photos. Changing the world one Mexican at a time…
Once again we managed not to go a-Pottering last night. Jose turned up and we had another evening of informal political debate and updates on his philandering. Which was grand. Adolescent wizardry tonight though, hopefully.
To see the latest photos of the town centre, click here for the flickry slideshow. And have a picture of a frog to tempt you that way.
I ended up making shepherd’s pie based on an old family recipe I found on the world wide wibbly web, with a few adaptations. During my research I found out that I was actually cooking cottage pie, since shepherd’s pie is made with minced lamb not beef. You live and learn. Anyroad, it was well nice and I got to use the Salsa tipo inglesa I blogged about a few weeks ago. And it goes pretty well with tequila, who’d’ve thunk it?
It wasn’t all put together as last minute(ly) as I’d feared because Sita’s first Tequila class only lasted 2 hours, not 4. It was just introductions from the 15 or so people there and reading a few powerpoint slides. So we had time to nip over to Waldo’s Mart (the 99 cent store across the road, well, 13 pesos including VAT) and stock up on extra forks and stuff. It looks like all the people Sita was hoping to interview for her project are coming to talk in her class. Saturday classes run from 10 to 2, there’s no way I could have hacked that yesterday. Sita is made of stronger stuff, it appears.
Next Saturday it’s a field trip to the town of Tequila where there’s a festival of some description going on, I might have to come along for that one. On Friday night we’re going to a Thanksgiving dinner with some teachers from the American school, which’ll be a laugh. Tuesday evening another mate of mine’s coming over for tea and bickies. So the social scene is picking up nicely. The employment scene is also starting up gradually. Jose’s got a few leads, and there’s another gringo graphic designer in the area whom I might be meeting next Friday. Voluntary work appears to be easy enough, though. Sita’s off to staff a creche for the women’s rights organisation today in the town centre. And I’m expecting translation work from the Gwod Metropolitan Park people any minute.
AgaveWeb.com is crawling along, I’m a bit stuck for what to do with the site and need more inspiration. I was playing with rounded corners, first using CSS, then giving in and going back to the dark age of tables. I’ll work something out… Jed themed maybe? A lengthy flash animation of a black tail in bracken, then Jed jumps out, frisbee in mouth into a puddle. The muddy water splashes the camera and a menu pops up with options…. No that has nothing to do with Agaves. I’m open to suggestions…
We planned to see Harry Potter yesterday but Sita was too knackered after a late night and academic stuff, so we watched War of the Worlds on DVD instead. Maybe today… keep your eyes on the “Media Box” on the right for my two cents. Harry III was my first review for this website… June ‘04 seems like a while ago. Well, it was…
and finally, here’s a video currently doing the rounds on the interweb of GTA playing grandma. More non-sequitur-riddled-posts coming soon…
I rock. no really. I do. I’m this close to getting an ecommerce site up and running for a client… It’s taken me the best part of a day, but i’ve done it. nearly. And a mailing list application too. Just call me Mr. PHP. Actually, don’t. Really. Paco will do. Zank evuns for open source…
(see above and click for bigger, if you so fancy) Photostitch couldn’t tell arse from elbow of the view from our roof. I feel reassured about the place for humans in photographic collage again.
Big day tomorrow, we’re having another in our series of “sophisticated dinner parties” and, after consulting my mum by skype about the menu, shall be preparing some kind of regional feast. Maybe photos later.
Lots of good news from the PAPÁS crowd today. Email me if you’re interested… and it’s also nice to see Arturo and me Dad getting along famously in the comments section.
Click the picture for bigger, it’s a composite of 26 photos I took on Sunday standing in the market by la Iglesia Santa Teresita. Browse around on Flickr and you’ll also find pictures from La Barranca, the huge canyon where Guadalajara suddenly comes to a grinding halt. It’s also where the UdeG school of architecture is, so on weekdays the park is full of furtive young couples carrying their blueprints around in cardboard tubes. Lovely.
So Sita’s got her life in gear volunteering for a women’s rights organisation on Sunday and starting a university course on tequila on Fridays and Saturdays. We only heard about it today and it starts on Friday, serendipitous as me dad just said. If I had a job, I might’ve signed up too, but we can’t quite afford it. As long as Sita comes home and gives me word for word recollections of her 4 hour classes each day I’ll get by. For all you hispanohablantes out there, here’s the link to the U de G page.
I was looking forward to wandering round the International Book Festival, but as Sita and I approached the entrance I was turned away because I didn’t have a press pass. So the only photos i have are from hanging around outside. Sita picked up some bargain books on Tequila and we’ll go back tomorrow when they allow gente de la calle like me in. I also had a bit of a wander around the barrio while Sita shmoozed.
